PTA Corp.
case study
Bringing Ideas to Reality
Few manufacturers have been able to withstand the drastically
www.ptacorp.com
evolving global economic and technological changes for a
Location: Connecticut & Colorado, USA
period of over half a century, while sustaining a solid reputation
Industry: PTA Corporation is a leader in plastic
as a reliable, efficient, and innovative supplier. Nonetheless,
injection molding, providing a complete set of services
with a combination of state-of-the-art technology, dedicated
URL:
from design to tooling, manufacturing, and assembly
for the medical, computers, telecommunications,
industrial and security applications industries.
and knowledgeable employees, and a philosophy that
emphasizes quality and collaboration with customers, PTA
Corporation has been able to maintain its leadership in the
highly-competitive plastic injection molding industry since 1953.
PTA has gained a reputation for bringing ideas to reality,
Challenges
collaborating with world-leading companies such as Apple,
Providing customers with a complete solution
from concept to production, including design
consultation, material selection, and manufacturability analysis
Maintaining exceptional speed-to-market
working with customers in competitive, highlyaccurate and aesthetic-driven industries
Solutions
GE, Philips, Siemens, and Zoll Medical to address all areas of
design, quality, cost, and manufacturability. Each client works
with a specific team at PTA that takes the product idea through
a step-by-step process from CAD design to production and
assembly.
“We get involved with projects far before they are ready to be
released to manufacturing,” says Rich Dorans, Vice President
PTA Corporation uses CimatronE as a single,
completely integrated solution throughout the
entire design and manufacturing process
Results
of Operations at PTA. “Files coming in are often no more than
a basic concept. We give our clients suggestions to optimize
manufacturability with better part design and material selection,
assisting in the selection of different plastic resins, surface
finishes, and finish treatments, as well as defining proper draft
Implementing CimatronE across different departments
and offices has improved PTA’s design capabilities
and improved overall communications, resulting in
shorter delivery time of higher quality products
and other details needed for applying solid tooling concepts.”
Adds Don Miller, Senior Mold Designer at PTA: “We emphasize
extensive design review and analysis so by the time a project
is ready to go it greatly streamlines the rest of the manufacturing
process.”
Innovative Solutions for Manufacturing
PTA Corp.
case study
To maintain its competitive edge, PTA has had to adapt to
an assembly to see how they interact with one another are key
changes in the demands of its customers, including lead time
features that enable us to quickly let customers know whether
reduction. “PTA has always been known for speed-to-market;
they should modify some of the geometry. Cimatron has built-
Cimatron allows us to design and build molds more efficiently
in tools that our project managers use to simulate a split of how
so we can maintain our industry leadership,” says Dorans.
the part will fit into the tool to analyze drafts before it goes to
the designers. Moving forward, I can see this being a big help
Using CimatronE as an All-Inclusive Solution
to our quoting department.”
Prior to standardizing on Cimatron, PTA was using different
applications for each department. Dormer notes that “this forced
us to do a lot of translating of geometry back and forth between
different platforms, which made the process very time-consuming
and non-cohesive.” PTA has now adopted Cimatron as their
all-inclusive solution. “Cimatron has all the different applications
that are geared towards our industry, and therefore are a perfect
fit for us. Now we are designing in Cimatron, the moldmakers
and programmers are doing everything in Cimatron, our
electrodes are being designed in Cimatron, and we are now
working towards downloading information directly to our EDM
machines through Cimatron,” says Dormer. “The fact that we’re
all on the same platform has really helped streamline and speed
Working on a recent project provided a concrete example of
how valuable these capabilities are to PTA. The project comprised
a package of over twenty tools, all designed in Cimatron. The
majority of parts were overmolded, building one mold for a
solid substrate and another to overmold an elastomer on top
of that substrate. "Working in solids provides beautiful 3D
visualizations which really help the moldmarkers plan out their
job and understand where they want to take it much faster than
they were able to in the past¢,†says Dormer. Adds Miller: "The
hybrid modeling system is a huge advantage; I can do things
in solid, unstitch the part and work with faces and surfaces as
needed, and then re-stitch them when I’m done."
up our operations.”
Dorans is happy to say that the transition process exceeded his
Dormer adds: “I believe the area where we saw the biggest
expectations. “The training and learning process has been
advantage from operating under the same platform was in
quick and the benefits were clearly worth the effort. In addition,
electrode design. Even though they had been using Cimatron
Cimatron’s technical support resources have been extremely
for five years, their work was really hindered by different
helpful in smoothing out any issues that came up during the
departments functioning on separate platforms.”
transition.”
Using Cimatron, PTA is also able to provide customers with
“We are now strictly using Cimatron for any new projects
better feedback. Says Miller, “The fact that we can take parts,
coming in,” says Dorans. “We have completely turned off any
run sections through it, see the interferences, and put parts into
other software we were using.”
“Cimatron allows us to design and build molds more efficiently so we
can maintain our industry leadership. We have completely turned off
any other software we were using.”
Rich Dorans, VP of Operations, PTA Corporation
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Innovative Solutions for Manufacturing
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